Question

African Americans moved to the North in the 1920s because

Answer 1

Reasons to leave the South:
From 1913 to 1915, falling cotton prices brought on an economic depression across the South.

After prices dropped, boll weevil insects destroyed much of the cotton crop.

In 1915, severe floods destroyed the houses and crops of farmers along the Mississippi River, most of whom were black.

African Americans suffered under "Jim Crow" laws in the South that segregated schools, restaurants, hotels, railroad cars, and even hospitals. Blacks were effectively kept from voting by laws requiring a literacy test (if you wanted to vote, you had to show you could read) and a poll tax (you had to pay to vote). Whites were exempted from either test by a "grandfather clause" — if your grandfather voted, you could, too.


Reasons to go North:
Northern industries were going through an economic boom, especially as the war in Europe began creating a demand for war goods.

Those industries could no longer rely on new immigrants from Europe to fill the jobs. The war had limited immigration from Europe.

When America got into the war, many young white men (and some young black men) were recruited into the military, leaving their old jobs open.

Salaries were higher in the North. Wages in the South ranged from 50 cents to $2 a day. In the North, workers could make between $2 and $5 a day.

During these years, there were a number of strikes as unions began to organize and demand decent wages. In general, blacks were willing to become "replacement workers," as the companies called them, or "scabs," as the unions called them.

Answer 2

Mostly because of Economic failure in the South and Hardcore RACISM.